With the site redesign mostly out of the way1, it’s time to focus on other stuff, namely, the whole mess that is Apple news coverage, something that becomes apparent to me now and then as I pause and spend some time actually readingApple news instead of merely skimming them.

And the overall impression I get is that tabloids have been outplacing their copywriters to the tech blogging “industry” that has taken over most US-based technology sites.

Aside from the frantic cut-and-pasting and repeated regurgitation of newsbites that has turned most of them into brain-curdling pap, there are probably only three completely sane people out there blogging about Apple nowadays.

I would probably go so far as to term some of them unbiased, but that would probably be stretching things a bit.

The rest, sadly, is just whoring for pageviews. Which is the only possible reason why they would stoop to speculate about Steve’s health or be daft enough to complain about an iPod-only event (that, as Gruber points out, happens every September) not bringing forth new Macs.

Or re-kindling vacuous speculation about future Apple products – since the old chestnut regarding web tablets is getting stale2, these days it’s all about netbooks. Or revamping the notebook line in glass-lined chrome. Or something.

Next, I will imagine that some hack will post an inane blurb about Apple working for years on… a flying saucer. Some idiot has got to be firing up Photoshop and pasting a fuzzy Apple logo on a blurred shot of a white frisbee as I type this.

Of course, speculation about killing off products is always an option. Personally, I’m completely fed up with analogies between the mini and the Cube, or the ’Apple TV is dead’ meme3. Apple products live on for as long as they make sense – or not, as the repeated self-cannibalization of the iPod line bears testimony.

But seriously, has anyone ever kept track of idiotic predictions and debunked them systematically? Or is there simply not enough fun in it?

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1I miss the photos too, they might come back eventually. Don’t bug me about them, it’s going to take time.↩